A Jewish perspective on the Pope, pedophilia and Passover

This time of year always brings up a number of intersections between Judaism and Catholicism. For starters, there's the obvious Passover/Easter connection (despite all those Last Supper portraits with leavened bread - come on, Leonardo, you couldn't get the hang of painting matzoh?). And both holidays incorporate pagan fertility symbols, from roasted eggs to baby chicks made out of marshmallow.
But this past week we were treated to a less charming Jewish/Catholic link, when the pope's pastor gave a homily likening the media furor over molesting priests (and the Pope's involvement in transferring one) to anti-Semitism. It was a slap in the face to real victims of religious discrimination all over the world. Granted, my experience in that area is limited to crying when I read the Diary of Anne Frank, realizing that my dad's family could have been in danger if Hitler had invaded Baltimore, and, as the only Jewish kid in 4th grade, explaining to clueless classmates that Hanukah was not a holiday celebrating potato chips. But it was still uncomfortable - and ironic - to hear those kinds of defensive, offensive, remarks made during Holy Week.
Plus I have my own personal interfaith intersection, since as a freelance musician, I play wherever they hire me. This year, I booked a series of Easter masses, so I ended up reading about the papal homily on Good Friday, and then sitting at the piano while I listened to the traditional 'Prayer for the Conversion of the Jews'. (I felt somewhat like a musical prostitute - outraged and disgusted, but not too outraged to accept the check.)
And on a different level, the connection between children and sex is also prominent in my household because I have 3 boys (2 teenagers and a husband) whose sense of humor makes South Park look like Erma Bombeck. Needless to say, the whole subject brought up a barrage of 'that's what she said' jokes and pretty good imitations of the pedophile character from Family Guy. Normally, I try to keep from laughing at their inapproriate humor (and usually fail, if only because their laughter is so contagious), but under the circumstances, it just wasn't as amusing. The thought of some trusted religious adviser molesting my child makes me as irate as a Republican congressman the day they passed health care reform.
Fortunately, the media conspiracy has brought so much to light that even the Vatican apologized for the remarks (in that 'I'm sorry if you were offended' way that politicians use to excuse off-color racial slurs and trips to the Appalachian Trail, but for the Vatican it was progress). And it was a great 'teaching moment' to talk to my kids about anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, child molestation, and unloading the dishwasher properly. (Hey, as long as I was in lecture mode!)
I have 8-1/2 months to recover some of my own equilibrium before I play Christmas masses during Chanukah. (So far the only awkward moment I've had during that holiday combination was explaining to my kids, when they were younger, that Christmas actually wasn't a celebration of the birthday of Santa Claus . . . )

How do moms know?

3:15 a.m., sound asleep, not even my husband's snoring disturbed me, but it's amazing how quickly I woke up when a quiet voice whispered, "Mom, I think I threw up". Our 12-year-old had picked up that horrid 24-hour flu bug, so after we changed the bed and started the first of 4 loads of laundry, my husband went back to sleep and I sat up with Ben, holding the garbage-bag-lined-trash-can while he continued to be sick. In between bouts, I wiped his forehead, rubbed his back, and felt almost indecently grateful that his illness made him not only let me touch him, but he wanted me to do it!

At one point, Ben said, "Mom, how did you know what to do when I got sick?" I told him I learned from my mother, and I used some common sense - and suddenly I felt like a descendant of Caroline Ingalls, who always impressed me with her calm, assured knowledge of everything from the recipe for sourdough starter to making candles, including making a scrumptious faux apple pie out of turnips. (She's the mom from the Little House books - when I mentioned this to my husband, he said, Engels? wasn't she the actress who played the ditzy blonde on the Mary Tyler Moore show?) (I apologize to my future daughters-in-law - I tried to get my sons to read the books and could only talk them into Farmer Boy, the one about Alonzo's childhood . . . )

There were so many iconic moments from those books (and I'm NOT talking about the t.v. show, folks, which my kids only know from the parody on Family Guy with the overweight dad running through a field of daisies like Laura during the opening credits): making a balloon out of a pig bladder, the locust attack, the time Pa survived being snowbound in a blizzard by eating the Christmas candy, Ma's china shepherdess on the whatnot (which I had to look up in a dictionary). I read and loved all the classic childhood book series, from The Borrowers to All of A Kind Family (a great, fairly obscure series about a Jewish family in 1900s New York - really cool, if you haven't read them!). But nothing made quite the impression of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and I think it was partly because I knew the stories were true. Real people did all those things - by the time Laura set up housekeeping with Alonzo, she knew how to do them from watching her mother, just like I learned from my own mom: nothing quite so exotic as churning butter or pickling vegetables (although my mom did teach me how to sew, because she loved sewing, and how to make salad, because she hated making salads), but just by example, she showed me what to do when a kid gets sick.

I don't know if my kids will ever write a beloved series of books (or podcasts, or whatever the format is by that time), but at least they'll have a few memories of things they learned from me (how to make up silly song parodies, how to do laundry, how to make the NYTimes recipe for the world's best chocolate chip cookies). And someday, when Ben is up in the middle of the night with a sick child, he'll be able to explain how he knew just what to do.

What is funny?

Defining humor has been on my mind quite a bit these days for a variety of reasons. As a comic, I'm always looking for ways to turn my daily frustrations into good material, and as a blogger, I want to be as entertaining as possible for those three or four people who might actually read my posts. Then I've got two sons who have a very different view of humor than I do (which tends toward inappropriate and offensive episodes of Family Guy). Plus I'm starting to teach workshops to professional speakers on how to use humor - and as I've been researching the subject, trying to pin down 'what's funny' gets more and more elusive.

There are books and websites galore out there, analyzing humor's history and components (irony, slapstick, parody, incongruous juxtaposition). The more analysis I read, the more I agree with E.B.White, who said "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. No one wants to watch and eventually the frog dies." So instead of reading dry academic experts, I decided to see what made me laugh - and that's where YouTube is great. Sure, there are thousands of really inane videos of people burping or putting strange things in blenders, but there is a huge trove of old footage, everything from classic standup comedies to old sitcoms and TV variety shows. I spent an absolutely delightful half hour watching everything from Ernie Kovacs (weird, funny show from the 50s) to Carol Burnett Show out-takes, and I don't know if I gained any insight into how to teach humor, but I laughed until I cried, and therefore (according to all that dry academic stuff) I reduced my blood pressure, released toxic stress hormones, and lowered my neuroendocrine levels. (Or at least I didn't yell at my kids for a few hours!)